When William the Conqueror stumbled onto Pevensey Beach in 1066, he stepped into 800 years of history. The Roman Castle (C 290 AD) was constructed in the reign of two usurpers from Rome: Caraucius, a naval commander who seized control of Britain, and his assassin and naval treasurer Allectus, who met an equally bloody end killed in battle as Constantius retook Britain.
As the Romans left, the Britons populated Pevensey thinking the empty castle a defence against the marauding Saxons, who they mounted a resistance against. But in AD490 they too were massacred by King Aelle’s men ‘so that not even a single Briton was left alive’. The castle declined after the Norman Conquest, four sieges and the imprisonment of Queen Joan of Navarre, accused by her stepson Henry V of witchcraft. However, the village’s fortunes rose.
Pevensey was granted a Royal Charter in 1207 by King John and became a limb of Hastings in the Cinque Ports. As part of their agreement, Pevensey fishermen supplied fish for the English Army at the 1415 siege of Harfleur at the start of the Agincourt campaign. Already a harbour for Roman and Saxons, its income rose.
In the 13th century the Church of St Nicolas was built, named after the patron saint of fishermen and the port. Inhabitants were pleased to avoid passing the castle on their way to Westham Church (they feared arrest on trumped-up charges).
You would never guess now there was once a quayside along Wallsend Road and large ships sailed from there until 1699, mooring at Pevensey Bridge – a bridge petitioned for by the villagers and built in 1320 to replace a ferry.
Possibly in Tudor times, the Court House opened. You could even get sentenced to death here, drowning for freemen and hanging for the commoners (Mary Taylor in the C18th was strapped to a Cart and whipped to Westham and back for theft).
Coins were minted in the village during the reign of the Norman kings, probably in the Mint House, which later may have figured as the village’s customs house. It was home once to Andrew Borde, a Carthusian monk who became a 16th century spy for Thomas Cromwell and also the author of ‘The Merry Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham’. Yes, Batman is connected, its co-writer Bill Finger chose an early name for New York, Gotham, a nickname given by Washington Irving (of Sleepy Hollow fame) who took it from Borde’s book. Incidentally, the lapsed monk supposedly brought rhubarb to Britain!
The last trade of the port was iron cannons and cannon balls from the Ashburnham Iron Works. Plagued by flooding, silting up and shingle longshore drift, The Haven was sluiced, the sea trade dwindled, and the Customs House closed in 1705. The Court House became a Town Council, and as small councils fell under increasing suspicion of corruption, was disbanded in 1886. The Clerk had a bonfire of documents – a clear up or cover up? – but the flames lit a spark for the village ready for its next 1800 years of history.
